When you’re building a learning management system, content creation sits at the heart of everything. Teachers need to create course materials. Students need to submit assignments. Administrators need to post announcements. All of this requires a solid rich text editor.
However, many LMS development teams make the same mistake. They try to build their own WYSIWYG editor from scratch. Initially, it appears to be a manageable task. After all, how hard can a text editor be?
The reality is different. In fact, what seems like a two-week feature becomes a six-month project that delays your entire launch timeline.
The Hidden Complexity That Derails Your Timeline
Let’s start with what looks like a simple feature: letting instructors format course content. You add basic text formatting, insert a few buttons for bold and italic, and you’re done. Initially, it seems straightforward.
Then reality hits hard.
First, instructors start pasting content from Word documents. As a result, your formatting breaks. Meanwhile, someone needs to insert mathematical equations for a calculus course. Additionally, students using mobile devices can’t edit assignments properly. Consequently, your support tickets explode during your beta launch. Furthermore, you’re debugging edge cases instead of onboarding your first paying customers.
This pattern repeats across edtech startups everywhere. What started as a “simple” text editor turns into months of work. Eventually, you’re handling cross-browser compatibility, implementing table editing, adding image uploads, building collaboration features, and creating mobile-responsive interfaces because users demand them.
The opportunity cost compounds daily. That’s engineering time not spent on your core LMS features. Moreover, it’s time not building the gradebook, assessment tools, or analytics that make your platform valuable. Most critically, it’s time not shipping to customers who are waiting.
Where Development Time Actually Goes
The problem isn’t the initial build. Rather, it’s everything that comes after. Here’s what actually delays your launch:
Month 1–2: The Foundation You build the core editor with basic formatting. Initially, everything works perfectly in Chrome on your development machine. Naturally, you feel confident about launching soon.
Month 3–4: Reality Check Beta testers start using it. Unfortunately, copy/paste breaks formatting. Meanwhile, tables don’t work on mobile. To make matters worse, math teachers can’t add equations. As a result, you need to rebuild half of what you already built.
Month 5–6: The Scope Creep Now you’re adding features you didn’t plan for because users need them. For instance, track changes for collaborative editing. Then, comments for instructor feedback. Additionally, export to Word for offline work. Each one takes longer than expected.
Month 7+: The Maintenance Trap You finally ship, but browser updates break things. Mobile Safari behaves differently than desktop Safari. Furthermore, users on Android tablets have different issues than iPad users. Consequently, you’re constantly fixing edge cases.
Meanwhile, your competitors are already signing up schools because they shipped months ago.
Why Froala 4.7.0 Solves the Launch Timeline Problem
The latest Froala 4.7.0 release eliminates months of development work with production-ready features designed specifically for educational content.
1. Anchor Navigation for Course Materials
Creating course syllabi, study guides, and interactive lesson plans requires internal navigation. Specifically, the new Anchor feature allows instructors to insert named anchor points and create links to them, enabling students to jump directly to specific sections.
Why it matters for your launch: For example, a 50-page course manual can have a clickable table of contents. Similarly, a complex assignment can link to its rubric or reference materials. This feature transforms how learners interact with course materials without your team spending weeks building navigation logic, UI dialogs, and cross-browser smooth-scrolling behavior.
2. Page Breaks for Professional Documents
When instructors need to export assignments, study guides, or reports for printing, proper pagination matters. Accordingly, the Page Break feature ensures documents print correctly with a dedicated toolbar button that inserts a clear, non-editable marker.
Why it matters for your launch: Students can submit perfectly formatted essays. Likewise, administrators can create printable policy documents. Importantly, Froala’s implementation includes advanced controls like the exportPageBreak option and event hooks like pageBreak.beforeInsert, giving you production-grade pagination without building any of it yourself.
3. Export to Word for Workflow Flexibility
Students and teachers constantly move content between platforms. Therefore, the Export to Word functionality means assignments and course materials created in your LMS can be seamlessly exported to a .docx file.
Why it matters for your launch: Notably, this is one of the most complex features to build reliably. In contrast, Froala’s exportToWord plugin preserves formatting, images, and tables, with configurable filenames and event hooks. As a result, your platform becomes more flexible without your team wrestling with Office Open XML specifications for months.
The Real Advantage: Unlimited Scale Built In
Here’s what separates Froala from other rich text editors: unlimited editor loads and unlimited users on all plans.
This means your LMS can scale from 50 students to 50,000 students without license restrictions or surprise usage fees. In contrast, most competing solutions charge per-user or per-load, creating unpredictable costs as you grow. With Froala, your costs stay predictable even as enrollment explodes.
Starting at just $719/year for the Professional plan or $1,599/year for Enterprise (with perpetual licensing also available), you get production-ready functionality that would cost tens of thousands to build and maintain yourself.
What Ships With Froala Out of the Box
When you integrate Froala, you immediately get:
Educational essentials: Mathematical equation support through MathType integration. Track Changes for collaborative review. Additionally, real-time collaboration for group projects. Plus, scientific notation handling.
Production-grade reliability: Cross-browser compatibility maintained with every release. Furthermore, mobile-responsive interfaces that work on all devices. Finally, performance optimized for thousands of concurrent users.
Accessibility compliance: WCAG standards met from day one. Full keyboard navigation. Screen reader support. Indeed, these requirements pass accessibility audits without delays.
Developer productivity: Comprehensive documentation. Native integrations for React, Angular, Vue, and more. Moreover, API access with extensive customization options. Ultimately, your team implements features in days, not months.
The Launch Timeline Question
Here’s the decision that affects your entire business trajectory:
Path A: Build your own editor
Months 1–2: Initial development
Months 3–4: Bug fixes and mobile support
Months 5–6: Feature additions users demand
Month 7+: Ongoing maintenance forever
Result: Launch delayed 6+ months, competitors gain market share
Path B: Integrate Froala
Week 1: Integration and customization
Week 2: Testing and deployment
Week 3+: Building features that differentiate your LMS
Result: Launch on schedule, focus on what makes you unique
The math is simple. Building costs you time you can never recover. Specifically, that’s 6 months your competitors are signing schools, gathering feedback, and iterating. During this period, you’re not generating revenue. Moreover, it represents 6 months of salary expense without income.
Why This Matters for Top-of-Funnel Growth
Every day you delay launch is a day you can’t start building your marketing funnel. Without launching, you can’t run pilot programs. Similarly, you can’t collect testimonials. You can’t iterate based on real user feedback. In addition, you can’t start building the case studies that drive future sales.
Your rich text editor is infrastructure. Critical, yes. However, it’s not what makes your LMS unique. Educators care that content editing works reliably and has the features they need. Ultimately, they don’t care whether you built it or integrated it.
The platforms that win are the ones that launch faster, learn faster, and iterate faster. Froala removes the text editor from your critical path, letting you focus on what actually drives adoption: your gradebook design, your assessment methodology, your analytics insights, your integration ecosystem.
Making the Right Decision for Your Launch
If you’re pre-launch, every engineering decision should optimize for speed to market. If you’re post-launch but pre-scale, every hour should build features that drive retention and growth.
Building a text editor does neither.
Start with what gets you to launch fastest. With Froala’s affordable pricing, unlimited scalability, and production-ready features, you eliminate a major bottleneck from your development timeline. Your team stays focused on building the LMS features that make educators choose your platform over alternatives.
The question isn’t whether you can build a text editor. The question is whether you can afford the delay.
The article was published on the Froala blog.
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